


When The Rain Comes

by perductus



Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: Dangan Ronpa Spoilers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-13 23:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3399995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perductus/pseuds/perductus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The flowers in the garden were too colourful. Too bright. Artificially so. Touko had certainly never seen such hues in flowers outside of Hopes Peak... just like everything else in this stupid school. Painted as if everything was happy and dandy and oh-so-wonderful when in fact it was just another reminder of their imprisonment."</p>
            </blockquote>





	When The Rain Comes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zenonaa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenonaa/gifts).



> An exTREMELY belated fic for Zenonaa, for it was her birthday recently! She writes so many amazing DR fics (mostly tofu god bless) so if you haven't you need to read her stuff oh my goodness.

Waking before Monokuma’s morning announcement was becoming habit for Touko. Each night, the hours she spent asleep dwindled, until she wasn’t sure whether she slept or just lay awake on her bed. Shadows lurked in the corners of the room she was too afraid to explore, so sitting awake in there became less and less appealing.

Going for walks became her new morning routine. Before everyone else was up, she’d pad through the silent corridors, with no particular aim other than to distract herself from years of splattered crime scenes mixed in with the raw visions of brutal execution after execution.

With the addition of the fifth floor, the garden became a favorable haunt. The early hours were really the only time she could visit it, seeing as Yasuhiro also decided to frequent the greenhouse-like room. Touko came for tranquility, not some idiotic ramblings about aliens or the Illuminati.

The flowers in the garden were too colourful. Too bright. Artificially so. Touko had certainly never seen such hues in flowers outside of Hopes Peak. She picked an obnoxiously bright yellow flower from the grass. It was just like everything else in this stupid school. Painted as if everything was happy and dandy and oh-so-wonderful when in fact it was just another reminder of their imprisonment. 

The petals of the flower came away in her fingers. One, two, three. _Sayaka, Leon, Junko._ Petals fluttered to the floor. Four, five. _Chihiro, Mondo._ One of the petals split between her fingernail. Six, seven, eight. _Kiyotaka, Hifumi, Celestia._ Half the petals remained. Nine. _Sakura._

Six petals remained. Touko tugged at one of them and held it up to her face.

 _Yasuhiro._ What an oaf. She flicked it to the floor and picked another.

 _Aoi._ Air headed bimbo. It joined the others at her feet.

 _Kyouko._ Snooty know-it-all. Juice from the flower seeped onto her fingertips.

 _Makoto._ Naïve and untalented. She wondered if vandalizing the plants in the garden was against school rules.

Two petals cling to the stalk. Picking the smaller one, she examined it, squinting.

 _Touko._ No comment. She let it fall to the floor.

One last petal stood. One bright yellow snippet that bore no stains or tears. The most perfect petal.

‘Byakuya-sama…’

Her whisper caused the petal to quiver, then fall. The last six petals lay strewn over the tips of her shoes. For there were only six remaining.

‘What are you doing here?’

The stalk flipped out of Touko’s hand as she jumped, jerking her head upwards to locate the source of the voice.

Byakuya stood, arms folded, in the entrance to the garden. His eyes scrutinized her, before scanning down to the destroyed flora at her feet. ‘Why are you… destroying the plant-life?’

‘Oh…! I…’ Touko shuffled her feet, mashing what remained of the flower onto the soles of her shoes.

He strode towards her. She shuffled back a little, jolting as her back collided with an overhanging leaf. Byakuya stopped a mere inches from her. He narrowed his eyes at the large plant standing central in the room. ‘Not that I care about the condition of this garden.’ He sniffed and looked directly at her. ‘You didn’t answer my first question.’

To be quite frank, Touko was too shocked that he was voluntarily initiating conversation with her at all to be able to uphold said conversation. As their numbers dwindled, time for “idle chitchat” as Byakuya might have once referred to it was long gone. The nights they spent reading (or in Touko’s case, admiring) in the library together petered out as each trial brought the ever diminishing group into a higher state of tension than the last. Most of their interactions lately consisted of Byakuya barking orders at her that she happily chose to obey. It gave her a sense of purpose. A sense that she meant something to him.

‘I…’ Touko started. ‘I w-was on a walk…’

‘A walk?’ His nose crinkled. ‘Am I supposed to believe that you don’t have some ulterior motive? Being out at this time could be seen as suspicious.’

‘You’re out t-too…!’

Touko immediately regretted her outburst as Byakuya scowled. ‘I don’t have any obligation to explain to you why I am here.’

‘Of c-course not, Byakuya-sama…’

Silence fell between them. Touko’s fingers curled around one another. She peeped up at him before following his gaze back down to the petals crushed at her feet.

‘Is there a reason you’re tearing apart the flowers?’ Byakuya eventually asked.

‘N-Not really…’ Touko shuffled her feet. His direct question caused something in her brain to falter. ‘I used to p-pick flowers when I w-was little. It’s… calming.’

‘By picking the flowers, you’re killing them,’ stated Byakuya, bluntly. He waved a hand towards the grass area where other brightly hued flowers stood static. ‘As soon as you uproot them, you’re cutting off their water and nutrient supply, leaving them to wither.’

Following his gesture, Touko nibbled her thumbnail. She scrutinized the overly tinted flowers. ‘I d-don’t like them m-much anyway.’

‘You said they were calming.’

‘The act of picking them is,’ Touko bit her lip. ‘Not the a-actual flowers… especially n-not these ones. They’re artificial and fake and pumped full of chemicals to m-make them glow horrible colours.’

It might have been her imagination, but Touko swore she heard Byakuya chuckle. If only very quietly. She glanced at him. The vague hint of a smirk lurked on his face, only for it to disappear as he noticed her staring. Touko flushed and averted her eyes back to the floor.

Earlier in their school life (if one could even call it that), Touko and Byakuya would sit together in the library. At first, it was just a case of Touko staring longingly at Byakuya from across the room as he read. Time passed, and she crept inwards, eventually taking a seat at the desk. That was when conversation began to strike up. For reasons beyond her knowledge, Byakuya would ask what she was scribbling in the notebook that sat before her, or whether she had bathed that morning. She would answer, tone tinted with eagerness, joyful that he was taking time out of his far more important schedule to waste his words on her.

As Genocider Syo became more prevalent, Byakuya began to enjoy Touko’s company a lot more. Maybe enjoy was too strong a word. Tolerate. He definitely preferred Touko to the rather obnoxious alternative. Though Touko hated all thought of her counter-part, she found herself thanking Genocider Syo more than she would have liked. On occasions where Touko would be unconscious for key moments such as trials, or verdicts or investigations – Byakuya would later fill her in on what she had missed. Albeit, a very truncated and blunt version of events but… he took the time to take her aside and make sure she was in the loop. To insure that she wasn’t missing out on anything that was going on around her. He didn’t have to, and she hadn’t asked him to yet… he did.

Touko somehow wished that their late night library conversations had led somewhere. Being the romance author that she was, fleeting visions of stolen kisses behind bookshelves or hands entwined beneath desks often crossed her mind but never made it into reality. Yet.

Quiet reigned until somewhere in the roof, a bell began to shriek. Both Touko and Byakuya looked up, startled.

‘W-What’s that…?’ asked Touko, shuffling slightly closer to Byakuya, staring warily around the fake glass ceiling, hands hovering over her ears in an attempt to block out the shrill ringing.

Before Byakuya could open his mouth to answer, the entire greenhouse burst into a thunderous hissing. Water began to jet from the ceiling and within seconds, both were completely drenched to the skin. Touko squeaked, belatedly covering her face as cold droplets hammered against her head.

Byakuya stood shell-shocked, seemingly unsure what to do. His hair lay plastered against his forehead, the artificial rain flattening the natural flicks.

All of a sudden, a thought entered Touko’s head. A mischievous thought. A thought, that really should have been the last thing to dash into her mind as she stood shivering in a torrential downpour. But as a romance author, this thought was one of many thoughts that made her books so good. And in retrospect, when else was she going to make those daydream visions a reality?

She moved her hands away from her ears, grasped the lapels of Byakuya’s sodden jacket and tugged. He lurched towards her and she captured his lips in a wet, spontaneous kiss.

Water trickled down both their faces, seeping into Touko’s mouth. After a short moment, in which Byakuya stood frozen, she pulled back. She scanned his face for a reaction. Anything to rebuff the sudden uncertainty nagging her brain.

His face was a picture of confusion. Brow furrowed and mouth slightly ajar, staring at her as if she’d grown another head.

Doubt began to seed itself in Touko’s mind. She’d gone too far. Stepped out of line. Rain dribbled down her forehead, stinging her wide eyes. Dread pooled in her stomach and she was about to take a step back when something unexpected happened.

Byakuya leant out and pulled her back towards him, his arm snaking round her waist as he crushed their mouths together for the second time.

Touko wrapped her arms around his neck, rolling his bottom lip between her teeth, tasting the cold clinical water trickling down both their faces, but also something warmer, something that she’d dreamed of but until now, never experienced. Disbelief bloomed in her mind, flooding through her and turning to joy and bliss and gratitude that he hadn’t scolded her for the unprompted kiss. The kiss that held a strange feeling of being wanted for longer than she could remember, strange seeing as she’d only known Byakuya Togami for little more than two weeks. A kiss… that did not feel entirely unfamiliar.

They broke away to breathe. Both needed it, for they were panting. Byakuya’s face still held confusion, eyes searching hers, searching for an answer or explanation to why she did what she did.

Touko didn’t really know why she did it. Impulse. Desperation. The way Byakuya seemed to be almost enjoying her company, just like he had all those nights in the library. The little chuckle at her quips, the way he purposefully initiated conversation, and kept it going too. That, and she’d always wanted to fulfill the romantic trope of being kissed in the rain. Do the sprinklers really count as rain? It was the closest they were going to get, locked in a school.

Byakuya straightened up, but his hands remained on her waist. ‘Stupid…’ His words were barely audible, staring upwards.

‘…What?’ Touko tilted her head, arms falling from his neck to his jacket.

‘I can’t believe I forgot about the sprinkler system,’ he looked up at the ceiling. ‘It’s set to go off at seven thirty every morning.’

By now, the water had soaked through her clothes, licking at her skin and causing an overall uncomfortably cold and damp feeling. A small chatter shook her teeth.

Byakuya eyed her. ‘We should leave before we both catch colds. I dread to think what kind of medical aid Monokuma will be leaping to try and provide us with should such a thing occur.’

Moving his hands to grip her shoulders, he swiveled her around and began to move her in the direction of the exit. Touko let herself be maneuvered, still reeling from the previous few minutes. It had been so quick, so impromptu, that she begun to wonder if it had really happened at all.

But the taste on her mouth reassured her. It had happened. She’d kissed Byakuya Togami in the garden, while the sprinklers rained droplets down upon them. And he… hadn’t objected. No, he pulled her back for more.

Once out in the corridor and away from the sprinklers, Byakuya rung out the hem of his jacket, splattering water onto the floor. He frowned. ‘We will both need to change our clothes.’

‘Yes…’ Touko nodded, still slightly dazed.

Byakuya began to stride in the direction of the stairs, leaving a trail of wet footprints. Touko followed in a half jog. She caught up with him and walked along side.

‘…Byakuya-sama…?’ She spoke after a moment’s silence.

‘What?’ He didn’t look at her but carried on walking.

‘Did you…’ Touko wet her lips, searching for the right phrasing. ‘Did you… l-like… what j-just...?’

Red seeped across Byakuya’s face, and he very pointedly did not look her way. If anything, he sped up, causing Touko to have to break into a jog again. ‘What exactly… are you referring to?’

Touko’s heart sank. He was going to pretend it didn’t happen. Did that mean he didn’t like it?

‘In the garden…’ She pressed. ‘When we… we…’

He stopped abruptly in the middle of the corridor. Touko nearly bumped into him.

‘What happened in the garden…’ Byakuya said, before pausing to stew over his words. ‘…was a lapse in judgment. A miscalculation.’

Touko’s face fell, but he continued.

‘It’s still early in the morning and I am not in a logical state of mind.’ He began to monologue to himself, which Touko was happy to listen to. ‘The very fact that the timing of the sprinklers slipped my mind is proof of that.’ Byakuya paused to look at her, but eye contact wasn’t quite made. ‘I don’t want you getting the wrong idea.’

‘N-No…’ replied Touko, shaking her head.

‘We are entering a very critical stage of the game,’ Byakuya continued. ‘There are only six of us remaining. I don’t have time for…’

The hum of the heating and lighting pressed against their ears.

Byakuya’s brow furrowed as his words trailed away. His eyes finally made contact with hers. Blue pierced grey, chilling her down to her heart - though that might have been her soaked clothes.

Eventually, Byakuya tore his eyes away, glancing at the puddles dripping from them and pooling on the floor of the corridor. ‘We should change our clothes.’

Without missing a beat, Touko replied; ‘Together?’

A scathing glare. ‘No,’ Byakuya scoffed. ‘You will return to your room and change your clothes there, where I will not have to look at you.’

He turned and stalked off down the staircase, leaving a trail of damp footprints in his wake. Touko followed without another word.

 

* * *

 

They reached the dormitory corridor and Byakuya made to go straight into his room.

‘Byakuya-sama?’ Touko spoke before he could disappear.

Pausing and turning, Byakuya scowled. ‘What? You’ve wasted enough of my morning as it is.’

‘Why… were you out this early?’

‘Same as you, I was on a walk.’

Touko twirled the end of a sodden braid around her finger. ‘Will you go on another walk tomorrow?’

‘Not if you’re going to be waiting to lure me into the garden again,’ Byakuya opened the door to his room and stepped inside but before he could disappear—

‘Byakuya-sama?’

The door’s hinges creaked slightly as Byakuya paused. He appeared to stifle a sigh before directing his gaze to her. ‘…What?’

Touko opened her mouth. Then closed it. She wanted to ask if he would come to the garden with her again. To the library with her. To go somewhere with her and spend time with her but she already knew the answer.

‘…Nothing,’ she said eventually. Her face felt hot, in contrast to the rest of her body.

Byakuya shut the door in her face.

Touko remained outside his room for a further few moments. Her soggy clothes clung to her skin, lowering her body temperature significantly but she couldn’t help but let a smile spread across her face. A smile, because just before Byakuya let the door shut, she thought she saw his chilly façade slip, just a little.

A finger brushes over her lips. Byakuya was right. They are reaching a critical stage now. And things are going to get worse. But she’ll always have the memories of kissing Byakuya Togami in the garden.


End file.
